Telehealth Software Development – Cost and Features

“For the first time really we’re discovering physicians are expressing much more openness and willingness to consider information about their patients coming from DIY devices.”

The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) states in one instance that, “in the digital world, telehealth is the natural evolution of healthcare services.”

Over the past few decades, we have seen significant growth in the consumption of digital assets and internet technology. 

In the telehealth industry, it is becoming ubiquitous now to the quick transfer of images, X-rays, scans, video consultations, remote education, and social caring because of the internet. Whereas internet infrastructure is not an issue for us anymore. 

The internet service providers offer breach-proof secured internet facilities, and fast web servers, while taking care of standard policies for data transmission and password protection; to establish a render effect in telehealth. 

It has become easier for the common man to access remotely a specialist doctor or consultant without any obstacle. The digital telehealth solutions are cost-efficient to use and need no prior training to understand. The custom telehealth software development is an umbrella that not only includes telemedicine, but education, public relation, social services, health surveillance, and research.

In countries like India, the doctor-to-patient ratio is counted as 1:1456, which is a big skew. In the urban area, the density ratio is high compared to the rural area, which raises a high demand for telehealth and healthcare services. Hence, an ideal solution is mandatory for the regulatory functions of healthcare departments. 

Nevertheless, telehealth has a number of specialties that we are going to discuss inside the blog. 

So let’s start to dive in.

What is Telehealth?

The term Telehealth is not only limited to communication with doctors. 

It also includes non-clinical services like monitoring patients, scheduling electronic meetings, social support, educational purposes, wireless communications, and much more. By the definition of context,’ telehealth’ is a remote diagnosis that operates with telecommunication technology to the patients, supports public health in remote areas, and generates system kiosks to regulate patients’ health.

It would be easy for nurses, physicians, and social caretakers to handle people with remote assistance on a digital platform. Telehealth services enabled the public on video conferencing platforms as a healthcare solution. 

Telehealth is Not just Telemedicine Software

In the medical industry, you have heard about the two most common words Telehealth and Telemedicine. They both sound confusing for a while, but you should not misinterpret them. 

Telehealth is the terminology used to deliver healthcare services to the patients and different industries like hospitals, offices, banks, etc. Telehealth is not just telemedicine, it is a broader scope of remote health that provides healthcare solutions to major areas using the electronic medium. 

Whereas, telemedicine is specific to clinical services to deliver medical care to a person or patient who is situated in a distant place. The physician operates the patients from a telecommunications infrastructure in a remote place. 

Read More: Telemedicine App Development

What Solutions Fall under Telehealth Software Development?

Telehealth is a broader term that is not only used for clinical but for non-clinical services as well. It is augmented with different solutions including training of staff for healthcare solutions, educating people for health aligning services or remotely assisting minor practitioners or admin in improving their health services. Telehealth services help patients to cure and discharge fastly without any failure. 

It has a unique goal to deliver to different industries. It provides a healthy lifestyle and primary care to the people living in remote places. Where there is a shortage of transportation, telehealth provides medical assistants and offers self-advised options to manage patients’ health. At the time of a pandemic crisis, we have seen how telehealth software development plays an important part in curing people in distant places. 

Now is the time to throw light on the best solutions that fall under custom telehealth software development;   

• Teleoperation, Tele-Assessment, and Tele-Training for Surgery: Teleoperation is the terminology that eliminates the limitation of conventional telesurgeries. Tele-surgery or teleoperation are modern ways to perform operations using robotics, telecommunications, and electronic devices and software from geographically distant places with the help of specialist surgeons. Its main benefit is to cure distant patients, resolve the limitations of surgeon issues, and reduce long transportation and infrastructure equipment, and costs. 

• E-Prescription/Telemedicine Software: e-prescription software is referred to as an electronic prescription handbook, that allows physicians or medical facilitators to read and write their prescriptions digitally to reduce human errors. It helps to manage the prescriptions, medical records, and medical staff history, connect to the pharmacy, and integrate with the electronic medium. 

• Online Pharmacy Softwares: the online pharmacy helps to administrate the online prescription plans, and send orders to patients via email. This is a hassle-free process to run deliveries and online orders. 

• Doc Appointment Softwares: The doc appointment allows patients to meet online with the doctor for a diagnosis. It is an effective solution for quick assistance with health advice and helps to prepare the treatment plan. 

• Patient Portals: it is a digital portal that consists of the personal information of patients including their visit history, medications, discharge summary, lab results, and diagnosis feed; can be assessed from anywhere online.

Read Also: Patient Portal Software and App Development Cost, Benefits & Key Features

• Diagnosis on Demand: with the diagnosis on-demand tool physicians diagnose their patients using intelligent modules without investing in expensive equipment.

• EHR and EMR: these are tailor-made solutions for telehealthcare that support exclusively the larger hospitals and enterprises. The electronic health report (EHR), or electronic medical report (EMR) creates new health plans, and patient care, and tracks new patients, or any specific plan of the patient over time.

• Drug Information Platforms: this is a medical record information tool for pharmacists that record drug details in a database to reduce any medication errors.   

• Medication Tracking: the online medical tracking tool is your single destination to keep track of your previous and current medications. The patient set the alarm to not miss any dosage. 

Online Doc Consultation – Widely Used Custom Telehealth Software Solutions

In the age of mobile phones and applications, the conventional way to consult with a doctor online is an obsolete matter. Do you have a thought like this? 

Wait, a minute… this is not the real truth. 

Even after the significance of mobile apps, online consultation has its merit. The most common and widely used telehealth software development we have seen in recent times is online doc consultation. With it, the patient can connect to the doctor in a minute. It is the easier and simplest mode for monitoring and consultation. All you have to do is to tell the doc about symptoms, or health problems, wait for the respective specialist to connect, and do the payment. Once payment is done, the online doctor is ready for your consultation.  

Even it is a fact that online doctors rely on intelligent virtual tools and mediums which may not be effectively sound to you. Every patient is not comfortable diagnosing virtually and has its limitations as well. But since online consultation works with a smart symptom tracker, the patient receives crucial primary care at the time needed. 

The online doc consultation medium is a really useful extension for health diagnosis and management. It helps to save time and cost and deliver quality services in hand remotely. 

• Online Doc Consultation – in the age of Mobile Apps (Remote Areas and all): in the age of mobile apps, online doc consultation is at a height and librating its importance. It supports a frequency of disease management in real-time that will help to reduce death and disability and measure the timeliness of treatment. 
• System kiosks: the system kiosks are the automated portals that help the patients to pursue self-assistance with the doc located remotely. The telehealth kiosks streamline the medical and nonmedical facilities and provide self-check-in support to the patients. 
• Remote Areas: using telehealth in rural areas can minimize the burden on patients and reduce their routine checkups. WHO states that in the remote areas of Africa where people with an empty stomach and unhealthy, online doc consultation serves them best telemedical services.

Devices Required in Telehealth Setup

Telehealth devices are the foundation to perform monitoring, quick consultation, and assistance; make everything easier for hospitals and patients. Telehealth devices are nothing but tools or hardware, integrated with the software to aid outcomes in real-time. 

We are here going to discuss more of the devices required in the telehealth setup. These devices assist the patients and reduce the dependence on senior doctors. 

1. Virtual Stethoscopes: virtual stethoscopes are the devices used to record audio of body parts including lungs, heart pulse, and digestive system; send it to the physician who is situated at a remote location to examine it. 
2. Smart health vital remote monitoring: the smart health vital remote monitoring devices help to diagnose the patient’s condition from remote areas. In case a patient is urged for any help, the patient can wear the wireless device and his condition is continuously sent to the physician. 
3. Digital Otoscopes: the digital otoscope device is used to examine ears and record the images and video to examine in any critical condition; send them back and forth to the ear specialist and examine. 
4. High-quality Cameras: HD quality images are mostly required in radiology, and dermatologists, to receive a high-resolution image to examine clearly.  
5. Pulse Oximeters: at the time of the pandemic, it was found that the oxygen level of patients are reduced. It is crucial for doctors to maintain the oxygen intake inside the patient’s body. Pulse oximeters are the best alternative for patients to balance the oxygen percentage. 
6. Wireless Scales: the wireless scales are used to measure the accurate weight of the patient. It will help the remote physician to prescribe the medication and further treatment as per the body weight. The weight measure is crucial to give any dosage prescription. 
7. Webcams: the telehealth services entirely depend on webcam devices. Healthcare hospitals use a high-quality webcam for video conferencing. Logitech C930 is the one telehealthcare webcam that has a great camera and mic. It helps the telehealth monitoring platforms to send the images to distant locations, for better assistance of the patients and junior physicians. 
8. Workstations and Workspaces: in remote areas where there is a lack of resources available; in that case workstations are set up for a better understanding of a patient’s health remotely. The setup required overall additional workspace and software requirements to establish a proper connection between the doctor and patient.
9. Network Hardware: in telehealth organizations a large network architecture is required, to smoothly perform the stipulated operations from remote locations. The good network hardware supports up to a large megabit speed that is sufficient for patients and practitioners.  
10. Endpoints: the telehealthcare devices you are using are properly synced and compatible with each other. It requires a modern device to handle. Make sure that the software is compatible with the hardware devices. 

Telehealth Software Development – The Soul of Telehealth Set Up

Telehealth setup has emerged at a location where the patients associated with the health care taker for interact with the platform, input data or questions and retrieve answers with the help of various medical peripherals, and telehealth app that clinicians and technicians used to configure and monitor the patient’s data. That is how both telehealth app and hardware work in sync to deliver solutions. 

Use case of Telehealth in Various Medical Branch

Telehealthcare solutions are not limited to only medical or clinical areas, it is widely used by different non-clinical industries as well. It includes various custom telehealth software solutions, emergency rooms, transportation, retail sector, ICU, etc. 

With telehealthcare, you can access visibility of the services, without any extra infrastructure, or cost. Here, we have discussed some of the top use cases adopted by the telehealth branches. Let’s start. 

Dermatology

In dermatology, the skin or hair specialist used telehealthcare to give effective solutions to remote patients. The remote dermatology solution using video consultation and modern device equipment helps the patients to be cured without real consultants. 

In custom telehealth software development, dermatology is used for solutions like;

1. Examine the skin, hair, nail, and other chronic problems 
2. Allows suspecting any suspicious spot on the patient’s body.
3. Allows specialists to quickly prescribe for the relative disease.  

Ophthalmology

The term ophthalmology is used to diagnose the problem in the eye. With telehealthcare, an ophthalmologist checks the eye disease if any persists in the patient, which resides at a remote location. In the covid, eye screening tests were widely supervised and performed by eye practitioners, to prevent patients and infected persons from further exposure. 

What an ophthalmologist can do;

1. Diagnose dry eye, stress eye, allergic eye, red eye, and other hemorrhage problems. 
2. If the diabetic patient lives in a remote area, regular checkups, connectivity, and awareness of the hospitals are not possible. Telehealthcare supervises them in diabetic retinopathy (DR) to monitor the vision ratio and prevent the patient from any blindness. 

Orthopedics

Telehealthcare aids a lot of benefits to orthopedics patients who are unable to visit city hospitals. The healthcare kiosks are self-regulatory to reduce the reliability of surgeons and senior staff. 

Orthopedics cures the patient health with the facility of telehealth;

1. Monitor the patient’s condition
2. Help the primary care provider to examine the patient’s state
3. Perform lab tests, X-rays, MRIs, etc. 
4. Perform regular checkups. 

Cardiology

Cardiology is a chronic disease related to the heart, widely used for telehealth. The cardiologist used the devices that access and transmit the real-time data to the patient’s record. It allows the doc to review and examine the disease if any. 

In cardiology, telehealthcare provides many solutions like; 

1. In remote areas, due to a shortage of handy devices; patients wear wearable devices to perform electrocardiograms (ECG) in real-time. 
2. The cardiologist monitors the blood level and scales the accurate percentage in the body to detect anything suspicious. 
3. Remote implantable devices to check the artery’s defect and blood flow. 
4. A Bluetooth device is used to check the blood pressure on the remote devices. 

Chronic Disease

In chronic diseases telehealthcare solutions are used in heterogeneous ways. In remote areas where there is less access to medical facilities, custom telehealth software development solutions are best to cure patients with chronic diseases.

Telehealth Software Development Benefits

A few benefits of custom telehealth software solutions are explained below;

1.  The remote doctor examines the patient’s health constantly and predicts the symptom in real-time. 
2. With telehealth, patients’ readmission time in the hospitals can be reduced. When a remote patient who has heart or cancer or is affected with severe disease; needs urgent consultation and monitoring. In such cases, a heart specialist regulates the patient’s real-time status and reduces the immediate readmittance to the hospital. 
3. Constant monitoring; in the case of chronic disease, the patient is required to be monitored frequently. With telehealth, a remote facility is provided to the patient, which helps him in monitoring his current status and report in case of emergency. 

Emergency Treatment

In case of an emergency, telehealthcare solutions assist patients through remote physicians to reduce their mental stress with video consultation. In case of non-critical emergencies, the patients who are present outside the ER, the emergency room or booth assist and care for them till the doctor reaches the hospital. 

The custom telehealth software solutions help the patients and reduce the need for ER. 

Psychiatry

The psychiatry in telehealth solution relative to illness, education, therapy, and medical sessions, provided to the patients from personal or one-to-one sessions in real-time by certified practitioners. 

Top telehealth solutions used for psychiatry are;

1. Medication facility
2. Group or individual therapy
3. Nursing homes
4. School retreatment
5. Disorders like autism, anxiety, physically special, etc. 
6. Telepsychiatry solution helps the person who is hesitant and in mental illness.  

Feature Implementation For Telehealth Software Development and its Working

Telehealth has been around us since the time of the health crisis, and sooner its efficiency has increased. The purpose to telehealth app development is to provide better clinical services to patients. As the market of telehealth solutions has already set its benchmark, and with the migration of innovative features it will transit to another level. The custom telehealth software solutions allows healthcare to connect with the patients and physicians securely with two-way communication.  

The featured telehealth software development solution is designed to be implemented to meet the aspects of the remote patients. It is based on two features: patients and doctors. So depending upon the complexity of the telehealth software development the feature implementation has changed. The developer here can add a varied next level of features and functionality.

To start with the custom telehealth software solution you need to integrate with a device like a desktop, laptop, or tablet with a webcam, smartphone, electronic stethoscope, inspection cam, etc. The telehealth app development team will decide the complexity and aid features separately for the patients and doctors.

1. Telehealth software features for Patients

• User profile
• Doctor’s list (Self-Service Kiosk)
• Assessment
• Video conferencing 
• Appointment Scheduling (Self-Service Kiosk)
• Customer support 
• Calendar 
• Treatment record  

2. Telehealth software features for Doctors

• E-health records
• Medical practitioner profile 
• Video and audio calls
• Manage appointments 
• E-prescription 
• Medical Education
• Remote patient monitoring 

Tech Stack required for the Telehealth App Development

Before entering into the telehealth industry you have a clear understanding of the tech stack, integrations, technology, features, and design everything to give a better insight into the product. 

The next thing is to research technologies serving in the telehealth industry software solutions. Understand the stigmatic market and integrate the right solutions into your product. That will endorse your telehealth software value in the market.

• Front-end languages: HTML, CSS, Java, Python, Javascript
• Back-end languages: SQL, PHP, Ruby on Rails 
• Third-party integrated solutions: EHR, EHR, video calls, payment gateways, video conferencing, and medical imaging software. 
• Cloud services: Amazon AWS 
• Protocols: FTP, HTTP, TCP/IP
• Technologies implementation: ML, IoT, AI, chatbots
• IoT Platforms: AWS IOT | IBM Watson
• Video Streaming: Wowza Streaming Engine 

A customized solution is possible along with the integration with the existing APIs and frameworks. Or you can implement the project from the beginning. 

There is no alternative to automated telehealth software. It is a high-end solution that is much more robust compared to the existing mobile applications. All you need to do is to telehealth software development from scratch by integrating third-party software, hardware, and frameworks. 

Once finalize the tech stack requirement, you should hire an in-house developer, or commute with the outsource niche industry experts to develop your custom telehealth software solutions.

Security and Compliance Requirements for telehealth software development

• Certified with EPCS (Electronic Prescription for Controlled Substance)
• Electronically protected health information (ePHI).
• Integrated with EPA (Electronic Prior Authorization)
• In compliance with HIPAA
• HITECH Act meaningful use stage 1 & 2
• Health and Human Services (HHS) guidelines
• Certification with EPSC (Electronic Prescription for Controlled Substance)
• FDA Policy for mobile medical applications.
• Health Level 7: HL7 Standards

How to create Telehealth Software from scratch?

Once you have decided to enter into the healthcare solution industry, the next thing is how to get started. Having your idea without any proper mindset is going to be a waste. 

Start your preparation from the scratch. Connect with some telehealth industry people existing in the place who have helped hospitals and other veterinary areas to serve the best healthcare solutions. 

We have prepared the entire procedure to telehealth app development for your medical space. Let’s start with the planning and then the subsequent steps further. 

Planning: In the telehealth software there are a few requisites that are important for you to consider. Start with the research about the niche industry and prepare the layout for the same. With prior knowledge about the competitors, you get to understand their specialties, where they are leading, and where they are lacking. 

Goals and objectives: it is crucial for the product to meet the planned goals and objectives at the beginning. Your goals must be clear and functional to work on; only results in the marking result. 

Designing UI/UX: once you go through the goals and objectives and have decided where to move on; you can go and start with the sketches, and design. Assign the software designer to create some stunning layouts that would emphasize your software story. 

Development: telehealth app development starts from the proper implementation of the tech stack and mainframes at one. For any of the errors if they persist in the middle the developer changes in sync. 

Testing: in the testing, the analyst manually applies automated codes and APIs of the product. And make it a validated product.  

Delivery and Maintenance: once the product is delivered to the client, the solution provider must maintain a robust support system.

Cost to Develop The Telehealth Software

The telehealth software cost depends on multiple factors. It varies as per the type of software telehealth solutions you are looking to develop.

However, the healthcare software solutions depends on;

• Per hour rate of developer
• The complexity of the product 
• Team to develop the software

The hourly rate and time for the telehealth app development would vary based on the charge of the developers. 

• For the European country: $40-$60/hr
• For the Asian country: $30-$45/hr
• For the US country: $50-$80/hr
• For the African country: $30-$40/hr 

 If you need a basic telehealth app then start the telehealth app development from the scratch including hardware, camera, sensors, recording tool, etc, it would not cost you high and saves your time. The cost for the custom telehealth software solution is expected to be $40k-$50k. 

However, the advanced telehealth software solution asks for levels of customization. The advanced software includes high-end solutions like smart health vital sign monitoring, point of care patient monitoring, blood pressure tracker, wireless devices, etc. for the advanced solution the cost, and manufacturing would go high and you must have a big space to develop it. 

Wrapping It Up!

Telehealth software and hardware solutions are vital for both inpatients and outpatients. With the advancement of technology and ease of commutation, telehealth practices become ideal for patients, schools, doctors, therapists, and many more. 

It would be a good idea for your self-automated business for healthcare treatments or for therapy centers, to telehealth app development. Hire the perfect team of dedicated web developers from our expert team and save your cost and time.

So, if you are looking for any assistance, catch up with us for some coffee!

Frequently Asked Questions For Telehealth App Development